142 M ARY ROBISON'S first novel, "Oh!" (Knopf; $10.95), doesn't have an ounce of fat. N or does it ever stand still. Its four chapters are divided into eighty-four scenes, which gain such momentum that near the end of the book five of them-two are just two sentences long -go by in less than three pages. There are few novelistic trappings. Robison, her eye fastened tightly on the souls of her characters, spends al- most no time on furnishings or ap- pearances or exposition. She tells us only in passing what kind of trees sur- round a house and what the black un- dersides of clouds presaging a tornado look like. She describes one of her principal figures in a single sentence: "He was a tall young man with a big jaw, rusty hair like his father's, and clear blue eyes under white lashes." At one time, novelists served as the cura- tors of their books. They gave an inti- mate history of each character, sketched BOOKS Yes! in the topography, made weather observations, played philosopher. But RobIson is nowhere to be seen; she has no presence, no shadow. Her charac- ters-an eccentric, well-to-do Mid- western family named Cleveland -talk out their book. Robison has, though, unmistakable authority and tone. She also has the sort of ear that strips idiomatic speech to its lyrIcal bones. A tornado victim talks to a radio reporter: The cat blowed all around in circles. Things come flying from every which where. My husband grabs me. Our Janet flies in from the kitchen and rams the wall and she's only seventeen! Broke her arm, it did. Sounds just like we got a great big train going over. I can't even hear you yet, my ears is dead-like. A freaky girl rock guitarist named Signoracci calls up Howdy Cleveland to tell him that he is no longer in her band: "We found.a kid from Detroit with a hand-held probe synthesizer. Knocks them f (grr @ , lVJU'i) Ü (F$ S{,( J +' yo \'\1 t !J! . ,. ..7 ' . . ... .. /. :.-:.. 5tc v cY) "' ( /? / /; ð: ;;iJ : "J {J t ø' # g;> .. ; ./ 1 I (l (þ t on their gourds. He shaves }H head, th kid. I shaved mine, too." "Sounds good," Howdy said. "We've got lIke five o'clock shadow, you know? Did I forget our boots?" "Bigger boots?" Howdy said. "Crueler boots," the girl said "Like for kicking in heads. Made in England." Cleveland père (he has no given name) and Virginia, a sanctimonious, "saved" television performer, have just had dinner in a restaurant, and Cleveland, as is his wont, is a little drunk: A carillon in the dark tower of the Episcopalian church bonged out an eve- ning hymn. "Flat," Cleveland said. "The music?" Virginia said. "I wouldn't know about that. I mean the world is flat," Cleveland said. Cleveland did a slow turn, and took in the courthouse. the two churches. the old library, the tired houses, the new adobe police station. "I would say the sky IS almost gaudy tonight," Virginia said. "Baby doll, this'd be run of the mill for a Texas sunset. When I was a kid, the world was divided in half. The earth part was where you shoved cowshit and where the pigs chewed each other and ate their ba- bies. Everything else was sky. The sky was God's speech." "I like that," Virginia said. "Anything with God in it," Cleveland said "Oh!" deals with a few weeks in the life of the Clevelands, who are, by almost any standards, troubling. Cleveland is a rough-and-ready fifty- seven-year-old Texas-born million- aire. He is retired but still owns the Whistle-Low Corporation, a con- glomerate that deals in soda pop, min- iature golf, and quick-shop food stores. He drinks too much, he has ulcers, and he armors himself by alternately spoil- ing and needling everyone around him. Out of boredom and twilight lust, he asks Virginia to marry him. Howdy, who is twenty-eight, lives over the garage on the Cleveland estate and dabbles in painting, sculp- ture, rock singing, and acting. He is a good-natured dilettante who allows himself to be taken advantage of. He watches old movies on television and does slapstick things like making a violent Vincent Price gazpacho in a blender whose top is missing. His sis- ter Maureen also lives at home. She is twenty-four and has an eight-year-old daughter, Violet, who is illegitimate. Maureen is funny and foul-mouthed, and she either sleeps or drinks, mark- ing the interstices with Librium. The